On 10th September, Pact Coffee will be 10 years old.

This is a huge milestone for us. We’ve come an awful long way since we began in Stephen Rapoport’s (our founder’s) kitchen – and we certainly couldn’t have done it without Pact customers.

We want to take this opportunity to say a sincere thank you to all of you. Every single bean that you buy makes a real difference at its source. Thanks to your support, we’ve been able to make a significant impact to farmers’ lives over ten years.

Here are 10 of our highlights from the decade:

2014: The UK roastery opens

Will Corby, head of coffee, joins Pact and opens our roastery in Bermondsey, London – we’re now able to roast our own coffee!

Will makes a pretty audacious step, requesting that Stephen buys roasters that are four times the going rate – a cool $250,000! Crucially, these roasters (Loring Smart Roasts) use approximately 25% of the gas that competitor machines use.

As a small start up at this point, a quarter of a million dollars is an awful lot – but this was the outset of our sustainability goals. We’ve continued with this and now have a second Loring Smart Roast in our new roastery, which is now in Haslemere, Surrey.

2015: Footballer turns coffee farmer

In 2015, Marcus Carvalho had been through a tough few years. The former professional footballer had seen personal tragedy and was ready to give up coffee farming altogether.

Back in his playing days he was nicknamed ‘Peacock’ and was renowned in the local area as the man who made it as a professional footballer – but coffee farming was a different challenge altogether.

Will saw potential in the farm and bought a cherry sorter for Marcus. With this piece of equipment, he saw huge improvements in his speciality coffee – and Marcus said that the excitement we had for it kept him in this new game.

Today, he continues to create superb coffee for Pact customers, works as a civil servant and still manages to find the time to teach underprivileged children how to play football – what a man!

2016: The Land of Diversity Competition begins

Will helps the FNC (national federation of coffee growers) with developing the competition and becomes head judge.

For Will, this wasn’t only a chance to recognise the potential of smaller-scale farmers; it was an opportunity to encourage other roasters in the US, Australia, Asia and Europe to develop relationships in a similar way to us.

Long, first-name-term relationships are the best way to make sure that the farmer gets a truly fair deal. And a week of conversations with other coffee buyers means plenty of opportunity to discuss direct, transparent supply chains. 

As of today, 35% of farmers who made it through to the final of the competition now have relationships like this with roasters – a percentage we’re truly proud of and hope to increase.

2017: A gift of… a goat?

Donatille Nyiramasoni has a tiny patch of land in Rwanda, which is home to trees that produce coffee with immense clarity. One of them was so good, it deserved its own Pact category – Gold Standard.

Donatille’s harvest is often very small (sometimes as little as one sack a year) so paying her a premium makes a massive difference.

Over the years, we’ve helped her with fertilising equipment, pruning and pesticide tips. But in 2017, we wanted to go a few steps further. 

So we bought her a goat.

That may sound strange, but it’s a great source of income – and quite handy with clearing the weeds, too! Since then, this goat has had twin goats, one of which has had its own baby. As a result, Donatille’s been able to sell these extra goats for profit and continue to make improvements on the farm.

2018: A chance meeting

Walter Calix lived in America until his mother asked him to come home and work on the coffee farm after his father passed away. 

Walter continued farming coffee for the commodity market until Rony Gamez, a real rockstar of coffee, asked him to help with translation when Will came to visit Honduras.

At this point, Walter had never really seen speciality coffee farming in action before, and he saw the trip as a great way to practice his English.

Over the week, he got involved with the coaching sessions and returned to the farm to produce his own speciality coffee with the natural method. Soon after, he used a local washing station to create coffee with the washed process.

But there was a bit of a problem – the washing station wasn’t in the best shape, and Walter was effectively paying them to spend the time cleaning the station before he could use it.

He told us it was no longer worth his time. So we loaned him $1200 to buy his own micro washing station and pay us back, with 0% interest, in time.

He’s since returned the money and consistently produced fantastic natural and washed coffees for the Pact menu.

2019: The kid’s alright

To lots of young people in Colombia, coffee farming seems like an unsustainable, unprofitable future living in debt in rural areas.

In fact, Mauricio Vega planned to move to the city for a job in sales until he saw us work with his father on the El Cairo farm – as a result, the family significantly improved their living conditions and moved into a renovated house. 

Shortly afterwards, with the help of his dad, Faiber, he bought the La Pedregosa farm and began working with our head of coffee, Will, to optimise the growing process.

Today, he’s incredibly proud and thankful to sell his coffee to the Pact community, and as a successful businessman still in his early 20s, he has big ambitions – to create the world’s very best coffee.

If Mauricio’s a pioneer for what’s to come with this exciting new wave of Colombian speciality-coffee producers, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

2020: The Garinka Project

Epiphanie Mukashyaka survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide which tragically took her husband’s life. She inherited his farm and began with small steps before training in speciality coffee.

From there, she used her knowledge to teach and develop her fellow local farmers and became the first woman to own a washing station in Rwanda. Today, she supports more than 4,608 farmers socially and economically with her cooperative – BufCoffee. 

In autumn 2020, we gifted 36 cows to the local families surrounding BufCoffee to provide fertiliser, food, nutrition and an additional income source through milk.

2021: righting a wrong

We’ve been working with Gilberto Basilio on his family-run farm, Zaroca, since 2017. And last year, he did something really special.

Gilberto used a large amount of the premium we’ve been paying him over the five years to purchase land that was formerly deforested for sugar production and plant trees again.

This reforestation project isn’t done for any monetary gain – he’s doing it just because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. We’re with him all the way!

2021: battling climate change

Gonzalo Moreno farms near to the Colombia-Venezuela border, where smuggling and drug production is rife.

As if that isn’t tough enough, he’s also had to deal with the extensive rain seasons that climate change brings in recent years – resulting in the presence of dreaded white mould on his coffee farm, La Secreta. 

We’ve been working with him since 2015, and since then he’s made huge sustainable strides forward. He’s spent the years working with a local agronomist to prune his trees, allowing air circulation and sun exposure to ward off mould build-up.

Like Gilberto, he kicked off a reforestation project last year – thanks to the planting of coffee trees, and the rich soils that this brings, what was formerly pasture will soon be forest.

2022: B Corp certification

This means we’re part of a collective of companies using business as a force for good. The assessment process is vigorous, took several years, and will keep us under close scrutiny to make sure we’re adapting to B Lab’s ever-improving standards.

It’s vital for us to do the very best we can for our customers, the planet and the fantastic farmers that we work with – this certification will ensure we’re consistently held to account for many more years.

Thanks again for your support over the decade. We genuinely couldn’t have done any of this with you, our customers.

We appreciate that times are tough right now, and it means an awful lot that you’ve stuck by us. We hope you’re continuing to enjoy some of the world’s best (and freshest) coffee!